Fault-Lines of the Old Paradigms: 4 Dualism’s Ghost Machinery: Why Splitting Reality Into Two Always Creates Three

Dualism looks, at first, like a bold refusal of metaphysical simplicity:

mind and matter, res cogitans and res extensa, experience and world, the inner and the outer.

Two fundamental kinds. Two explanatory domains.

But dualism has a structural flaw so deep it is almost comical:

the moment you split reality into two, you generate an unavoidable third—

the relational architecture required to connect them.

And that third term, once acknowledged,

dismantles the dualism entirely.

Let’s take the scalpel to the mechanism.

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1. Two Kinds Need a Bridge

Dualism asserts:

• A and B exist.

• A is fundamentally unlike B.

• Yet A and B must interact.

But interaction is a relation.

And if the whole point is that A and B have no common ontology,

then nothing in either domain can explain the relation between them.

So dualism must add a third term:

an interface—a causal pipeline, a mapping, a correspondence, a synchrony, a coupling.

But this “bridge” is never explained.

It is merely asserted.

In other words:

dualism cannot connect its two halves without secretly invoking a monism of relation.

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2. The Two Domains Cannot Stay Separate

Try to keep mind and matter apart, and each bleeds into the other.

Mind must:

• receive input

• generate output

• undergo change

• be influenced

• learn

• act

All of which presuppose relational interaction with something not-mind.

Matter must:

• appear

• be sensed

• afford distinctions

• constrain behaviour

All of which presuppose relational interaction with something not-matter.

The moment either domain does anything,

the other leaks in.

Dualism is a metaphysical border that cannot hold.

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3. The Interface Is Neither Mental Nor Material

If the interface were mental, then matter would already be mental.

If it were material, then mind would already be material.

So it must be neither.

Which is to say:

a third ontological category.

Dualism claims to have two categories,

but its explanatory machinery requires three:

1. Mind

2. Matter

3. The mind–matter relation

The third category is doing all the work.

And once you acknowledge that, the other two become derivative.

Dualism secretly relies on relational ontology

while pretending not to.

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4. The Collapse Into Interactionist Absurdity

Take the canonical version:

• Mind is non-spatial, non-extended.

• Matter is spatial, extended.

• Yet they causally interact.

But causal interaction requires:

• shared constraints

• a medium of effect

• temporal coordination

• definable entities in a common system

• differentiable states across which influence is tracked

Dualism provides none of these.

It cannot.

You cannot have causal influence

between entities that share no relational field.

So interactionist dualism becomes logically impossible.

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5. The Collapse Into Epiphenomenalism

To avoid the absurdity, some dualists say:

“Mind doesn’t affect matter; matter just causes mental effects.”

But then:

• the mind cannot act

• cannot make a difference

• cannot ground agency

• cannot ground meaning

• cannot ground knowledge

• cannot ground its own content

This is not a metaphysics.

It is a declaration that mind is ghostly foam riding atop physical necessity.

Epiphenomenalism isn’t dualism.

It’s an admission of defeat.

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6. The Collapse Into Parallelism

Another escape attempt:

“Mind and matter run in parallel, coordinated without interacting.”

But coordination is interaction—

unless you imagine a cosmic scheduler ensuring synchronicity.

So now you need a fourth category:

a synchronising law, decree, or structure.

Dualism metastasises.

The more you try to fix it, the more categories you must invent.

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7. The Punchline: Dualism Requires a Relational Monism

Once you track the logic all the way down:

• mind is not self-grounding

• matter is not self-grounding

• the relation between them is what makes either intelligible

• the relation cannot be derivative

• therefore relation must be primary

Dualism’s very attempt to split reality

reveals that reality cannot be split.

The machinery it tries to hide—

the ghostly interface, the unexplained synchrony, the tacit structural coherence—

is doing all the metaphysical work.

Dualism is not wrong because it posits two kinds;

it is wrong because it denies the one thing that grounds both:

relational organisation.